The Practice of Making Strategy: A Step-by-Step Guide

The Practice of Making Strategy is a user-friendly and extremely accessible text to guide students through the series of possible steps in strategy making. Each chapter introduces the students to the relevant theory, explains how it can be put into practice and allows the student to practice it him/herself. The book is also accompanied by a Website including a student workbook and teacher's slides. Throughout The Practice of Making Strategy, the authors cross-reference the main texts in the field and list helpful further reading. This book will be an extremely valuable student handbook to accompany strategy courses, particularly for MBA students.

Table of Contents:
Introduction Getting Started First Steps - Getting a Team Together Getting at Beliefs about Possible Strategic Futures Using Cognitive Mapping to Capture Interview Material Surfacing and Structuring Strategic Issues in Groups Building up a Distinctive and Realistic Goals System Developing a Business Model or Livelihood Scheme Identifying Distinctiveness and Core Distinctive Competences Agreeing Strategies Sustaining the Business Model or Livelihood Scheme and Resolving Key Strategic Issues Making a Statement of Strategic Intent and Other Aspects of Making Strategy Managing an Incomplete Process to Achieve Strategic Change

About the Author :
Fran Ackermann is Professor and Head of Department of Management Science at Strathclyde Business School, and an adjunct Professor at Curtin Graduate School of Business. She has written widely, publishing 4 books, over 20 book chapters and 150+ articles (ranging from strategy, stakeholder management, competency mapping to problem structuring, disruption and delay and risk management). She has been an adjunct professor at University of Georgia, Grenoble Business School and Bordeaux Business School. She is a member of the British Academy of Management, the Operational Research Society and is active at the Academy of Management (having served on one of the divisional executive committees). She is currently on the British Academy of Management Council. Fran has also been an ESRC Post-doctoral Fellowship Assessor and a Commonwealth Grant Advisor.

Review :
How the book was used and introduced. First, I have personally read a couple of relevant chapters before sending it to my class. In each class, I first talk briefly about it to the students and passed it to them for each one to read its contents. Some asked whether our library holds copies which showed their interest. First students find Ackermann et al.,′s book as not a boring material because according to them it is of less volume of pages compared to many similar texts on the subject. Indeed this is a practical, step-by-step and diagnostic tool. I recommend it highly to lecturers, students and most especially those of us in consulting business.